New York has gone to shit. Beautiful, beautiful shit. In Crysis 3, the speedily developed sequel to 2011's near-future shooter, Mother Nature shows Lady Liberty how to properly dominate a skyline.
It's the best of both worlds: Crysis' organic greenery butting heads with the sequel's towering skyscrapers. Sunlight pierces thick patches of canopy, flooded streets swell into raging rivers, vines scratch and claw at buildings and wildlife flits about your face. This is less urban jungle and more urban rainforest.And you call it home.
It's 2047, 23 years after US army major Prophet slapped on his Nanosuit 2.0 and took to the quarantined, alien-invaded Big Apple - but this time something's taken a big old bite of it. Namely, C.E.L.L. (Crynet Enforcement and Local Logistics), a private military company under US government mandate. They really, really want your exoskeleton and will do anything to get it - like erect a multi-mile Nanodome over the city to lock you down.
UNDER THE DOME
It's all a bit The Simpsons Movie, but the 'Liberty Dome' is a compelling idea. Under its transparent cover the city splits into districts known as 'The Seven Wonders', another bit of propaganda it seems as there's nothing wonderful about them. The story - the one they've fed news stations and the public anyway - is this citywide structure is there to protect the population and rid the planet of remaining alien forces.
But you know the truth. Biomedical company CryNet (parent of C.E.L.L.) wants your suit and the Earth-invading Ceph want you dead. They're all overlooking one thing: you're not locked in with them... they're locked in with you.
This is more paradise than prison, and Cabela's Dangerous Hunt presumably proved developer Crytek's inspiration in the way you track and stalk through thick vegetation. (We're joking, of course. Or... are we?) It's a sprawl you've slaughtered through before, but this New York is different. In a word, it's stunning. In two, it's absolutely stunning, and looks set to continue Crysis' lineage of hardware-defying graphics.
Rasmus Højengaard, director of creative development at Crytek, had this to say when we tracked him down at the preview event: "Obviously we're limited by things such as memory, but we have brilliant R&D guys and they're able to do things that no-one has done on consoles before." Fair point, but will this be a tale of two cities - the better being the PC version? "What's important", says Rasmus, "is the experience doesn't change."
Regardless of platform, this is surely a contender for best-looking game of all time. CryENGINE 3 is a fierce reminder Crytek are among the best in the business at both squeezing juice out of ageing platforms and putting the frightening power of newer ones to dazzling effect.
But something's got to give.
In this preview version, framerate is the casualty, silky smooth when demoed to us on a presumably NASA-donated PC (never-dipping under 90 frames-per-second) but likely the main concession for now six-year old consoles. Like Crysis 2 it'll churn and struggle during intense moments of debris-scattering mayhem, and the fire and lighting effects alone look too gorgeous not to send consoles to a crawl, but Crytek have ways around that. Bow, meet arrow.
BOW STREET RUNNER
The bow and arrow are key to less CPU-straining stealth, a pointed example of your new survival skills. The go-to weapon of ancient conquerors maybe, but Sun Tzu never customised his with explosive arrowheads, fire modes and scopes. Rasmus coyly alluded to different ammo types too: "There's going to be a variety. They don't all just do damage."
Your Meccano-like bow is ultra-customisable and packs a punch: a cam that tracks your kill-shots to their gruesome conclusion looks like something straight out of Hollywood, and frag arrows make a more accurate alternative to vague grenade lobs. When all else fails? A trusty knife and a close-up execution. However, you're not the only one with expensive new hardware.
The Ceph are licking their wounded tentacles since the hydraulically-powered kicking you gave them in the last game, but they've returned locked and loaded. Flamethrowers, plasma mortars and stealth-disabling cameras swell their space arsenal and sit comfortably alongside massive Ceph tripods (think AT-AT's designed by Hideo Kojima) and hulking Devastator Units. And they're not alone.
You've also got to watch your space-age-fibered back against C.E.L.L. soldiers, who wield near-future tech like the returning SCARAB rifles and Jackal shotguns. Both factions represent different threats, different angles of attack. The Ceph are faster, bigger and stronger, but humans have tanks, jeeps and turrets. If it's anything like the last two games you'll be able to drive them all.
If the two come into contact? They'll fight each other, recalling heart-in-mouth moments from Crysis 2 where the Ceph took aim at tanks by flinging giant arching balls of white plasma during a night siege. The core powers of your suit are once again the focus: armour, stealth and power mode, along with your visor's heat vision and tracking binoculars - open different avenues for combat.
Crytek wasn't willing to be drawn on how the suit will differ from its predecessor, other than it will be "enhanced", but we know already that, through the suit, you'll be able to hack into alien turrets and control extra-terrestrial weaponry. The bigger fun for some, however, is shooting real people in competitive multiplayer.
CITY ON FIRE
It was an underrated hoot in the last game, combining a CoD control scheme and Brink-like parkour with high-powered armour abilities seemingly straight out of Halo Reach. "You don't even know yet if there's going to be a multiplayer, and you're not going to be able to rhetorically lure me into saying that there is one!" joked Rasmus. Oh come on, what's going on the back of the box then? "We're not talking about that now, but that will be revealed later on." We'll take that as a yes, then.
Nature's reclaimed New York, and Crytek's reclaimed Crysis. There will undoubtedly be framerate issues on hardware less than a few minutes old, and those turned off by Crysis 2's invasion plotline and at times staggeringly dumb AI might find old issues remain - but it's hard to argue with high-tech weaponery, wide swathes of self-enclosed and stunning sandboxes, and do-it-your-way combat that packs a punch.
Welcome to the urban jungle.
Source: Computerandvideogames
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